Franz Viktor Werfel (10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet. He is primarily known as the author of The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933), a novel based on events that took place during the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Werfel was also Jewish, and intended his novel about thegenocide of the Armenians as a warning regarding what was about to happen to the Jews of Europe.